chennai-wsfindia-2005 -- Discussion around the WSF-India meeting in Chennai, Oct 2005
About chennai-wsfindia-2005	English (USA)
In defence of open space ------------------------ Arguably, one of the major contributions of the phenomenon called the 'World Social Forum' is the idea of the Forum as an 'open space' – and by this, signalling a 'new form of politics'. The central idea in the formulation is that a 'space', rather than a party or movement, allows for more and different forms of relations among political actors, while remaining open-ended with respect to outcomes. It is 'open' in that encounters among multiple subjects with diverse objectives can have transformative political effects that traditional forms of movements, parties, coalitions, and campaigns, with uniform themes and goals, exclude – almost by definition. It is not an alternative to these other modes of organisation – but it is, for achieving democratic and emancipatory change, essential as a complement. While the jury is still out both as to how open the World Social Forum is and also how effective this concept and approach is in terms of creating more democratic and emancipatory ways of conducting and understanding politics and organisation, there seems little doubt that especially in today's world of rising fundamentalism and growing imperialism, at many levels and in many contexts, the essential idea of an 'open space' is appealing - and worth defending and promoting. In many senses, it can be compared to the concepts of civil liberty and democratic right. We therefore believe it is necessary, in today's juncture, to at all times both practise, promote, and defend the concept of open space – and to engage in a process of constantly opening spaces - and also critically examine and interrogate it. The project : ------------- WSF India meet is to be held in Chennai from 6-8th October 2005. CACIM (Indian Institute for Critical Action Center in Movement) views this as an occasion for strategic cyber intervention aimed at pushing and expanding the boundaries of the Open Space. This project has been initiated to promote debate and democracy in terms of wider peoples' views. The project is also designed to activate, publicise the webspace www.openspaceforum.net and let it at the service of those willing to write-up on the list, express and debate. Practically this involves contacting and involving them as participants – this includes those who will be participating in the forum as well as those who will not but share interest. The mailing list will include reports, reflections and moreover critical engagement with WSF processes as Challenge to the Empires. The mailing list will also initiate debate among wider section of people that are not involved in the WSF process as yet and extend encouragement for them to get involved. It is worth noting that one of the sessions of the Chennai meet is titled as "WSF as an Open Space – Confronting globalization or dissipating dissent." Clearly the concept of Open Space is directly on the WSF official agenda. However the discussion time alloted for it is one hour that includes two presentation and 20 minutes discussion time. While it is clear that there won't be enough time to debate and discuss, it is even more pertinent that this theme gets widely discussed both prior to and after the Chennai meet. To see the collection of prior postings to the list, visit the chennai-wsfindia-2005 Archives.
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